


ooh, you make me live

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s07e04 The Power of Three, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, theyre best friends!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 13:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: Stuck on Earth during the slow invasion of the cubes, the Doctor tells Amy something he's never really told anyone before.





	ooh, you make me live

**Author's Note:**

> title from that one queen song.
> 
> happy birthday luca ily <3

He’d been trying to will the hours to go by quicker, and every time he looked at a clock it felt like a blow. For a Time Lord, he had stunningly little control over the stuff when he wasn’t in his ship, and it was bothering him. We’ll just wait until the cubes did something, they said, they’re bound to move sooner or later, and if not we’re bound to find out what they are eventually. So they’d said. They being Kate, and, by extension, UNIT. He should’ve known better than to trust them, honestly. 

What listening to UNIT meant was, essentially, staying put for the longest time he’d ever stayed put when he wasn’t being forced to since he was a child on Gallifrey. Even though Earth’s rotation wasn’t very long, the days were dragging by slower than anything. He’d been sitting at the coffee table in the Pond’s living room for what felt like a hundred years, and the clock on the wall behind him, which he kept craning his neck to see, told him it had been fifteen minutes since he sat down. 

He looked down at the piece of printer paper he’d taken from the desk in Amy’s office and at the pen in his hand and he tried to force himself to put them together and do something and make something. What, though? He could always draw. He hadn’t drawn in a while, not since… well, not since he became human for a few months and made a few of the biggest mistakes of that regeneration’s life. He tried not to think about that. 

So. Drawing. He caught himself looking back at the clock and stopped, setting a sort of challenge - wait as long as he could between checking the time, so, logically, more time would pass. Or he’d think more time would pass. Or something. 

He started to sketch. Rory was working a shift at the hospital and Amy had been at a photoshoot this morning, so they wouldn’t be home. He could always call Brian, or Craig. He could visit Martha and Mickey, or Sarah Jane. But those things sort of lost their appeal, because Brian called at least once a day and while he adored Craig he didn’t want the phone to be held over a crib so he could placate Alfie for an hour. He’d done so many dinners with Sarah Jane over the months since the cubes arrived that even they were running out of things to talk about. 

He realized that the vague face shape and start of an eye he had on the paper was becoming River. It had always been River, probably, he just hadn’t known it yet. So he added her hair and her smile and he missed her terribly and wished that she was the kind of person you could just call. 

She was probably off on some wild archaeological exploit, digging up the bones of some giant star whale or vortesaur, or maybe traipsing through the ruins of an immense celestial colosseum. Perhaps she was sitting at her desk, paging through an ancient manuscript in a lost language with pages so fragile she had to wear gloves to touch them. He kept picturing her on adventures as he added shadow to her face and light to the curls of her hair. He missed her, and wished that one of her explorations or digs would bring her to Earth in the twenty-first century, and to England, and to the Pond’s house. 

Did dinner with your parents count as an archaeological venture when they’d been born in the twentieth century and you’d been born in the fifty-second?

He didn’t have room on the paper for much but the head and shoulders, so he went back over it again, trying to add more detail. A crinkle beside her eyes, because she was smiling. A bit of gloss on her lips, because she wouldn’t fancy if he drew her without lipstick on. He continued adding things here and there until he heard the back of the sofa creak, and he looked back. “Oh, hello, Amy.” 

“Hey.” She was leaning over the back of the sofa. She smiled, and then came around to sit down next to him. “You’re drawing my baby.” 

He smiled back at her. “Yes I am. She’s my-”

“Don’t say she’s your baby too,” Amy interrupted, wincing. 

He laughed. When he’d first started traveling with Amy, he’d wondered if she had some sort of low level psychic ability. Now, he knew better; they’d just clicked that well. 

“It’s really good,” Amy continued, pulling the paper towards her. “Really. Really good.” 

“Thanks, Pond.” He kissed the side of her head. “I thought you were at a picture model thing.” 

“Photoshoot?” Amy raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I was. It was two hours this morning, and now it is… no longer this morning.” She gestured back at the clock.

He looked, and was genuinely shocked to see that hours had passed. He grinned. “Oh, that’s good. That’s lovely. How was it?”

“Fine.” Amy shrugged. “Good, I guess.” She was still looking down at the drawing. 

“You miss her,” the Doctor guessed slowly. 

“Yeah.” Amy nodded. “Course I miss her, she’s my daughter.” 

The Doctor watched her, and was about to say something about how he missed her too when Amy continued. 

“But it’s not just that I miss her now and I want to see her now, it’s-” She tapped the paper. “I’m her mum, and I was supposed to be her mum, and I just… never got that. I never got to be that. For her. I never watched her take her first steps, I never- sent her off to her first day of school, I never taught her how to ride a bike, you know?” Her voice was getting lower and thicker, and that meant she was crying. She ran a hand under her eyes. “I don’t know, I just- she needed me. She needed a mum. And I wasn’t there.” 

“It wasn’t your fault,” the Doctor said carefully. “I hope you know it wasn’t your fault, you- we all tried as hard as we could to get her back. If it’s on anyone, it’s on me.” 

“No, I know. It’s not anyone’s fault,” Amy said it almost mockingly. A touch more to the left or right and it would’ve been cutting. “But it’s my job to take care of her, and I can’t. I know you're trying to help but you just- don’t get it, alright?” She took a few deep breaths, and wiped her eyes again. “And that’s okay, but don’t try to tell me you do.” 

“But I do,” he said quietly, and figured that after centuries of never talking about his children, if anyone deserved to know it was Amy. “I used to be a dad, you know.”

“Right, but-”

“My people,” he pushed on, “live for thousands of years. A decade is like a blink of an eye, and I only had my children for eight years. That’s nothing, Amy, that’s… that’s an Earth day. The Academy took them, made them look into the time vortex, which no one should ever do, especially not a child, and then put them into study programs. I didn’t get to see them, I didn’t get to be a father, not really. Not until I was a grandfather, and that’s different. I left. They died. So I know it’s horrible, but you’re not alone. I understand, I promise I do.”

Amy just looked at him, her lip wobbling. 

“I’m not saying that makes it less painful for you,” he concluded, taking her hands, “but at least you don’t have to go through explaining it or trying to convey how you feel, because I know. That helps a little bit, doesn’t it?”

Amy sniffed, and after a minute, she said, “Yeah. Yeah it does.” She leaned her head on his shoulder and picked the paper up. “She’s so beautiful.” 

“More so in real life, you know, this doesn’t really hold a candle to seeing her,” he started prattling, “and it’s not very good, but then again holding anything up to her it’d look not very good, don’t you think? And besides-”

“Can’t we call her for dinner or something?” Amy interrupted. “I don’t know how timelines work, but… isn’t there a way to get in touch?”

“She doesn’t have a number,” the Doctor confessed. “If she does she hasn’t given it to me.” 

“Right, but we have a time machine.” Amy shifted, putting her chin on his shoulder and looking up at him. 

“But- Amy, the cubes…” 

“They haven’t moved in- what, two months? Three? I’m pretty sure we can pop out in a time machine - a  _ time machine _ , Doctor - and be back without having missed one boring second,” Amy pressed. “We could surprise Rory. I’ll even let you try and cook dinner.” 

“Can we stop at the shop first?” He raised an eyebrow. “You ran out of that frosting in a can stuff.”

“You ran out,” Amy corrected. “Rory and I don’t touch it. And sure, I don’t see why not.” 

He jumped up from the sofa, offered her a hand, and pulled her up as well. The two of them went out to the back yard together, where the TARDIS was parked and in a sort of semi-hibernating state. He’d talked about his children. He never talked about his children, not ever, and he barely talked about Susan. But Amy was smiling now, and that, he reckoned was more than worth it. 

Amy stopped him, closing a hand on his arm before he could step into the TARDIS. “Hey. Best friend.” 

He turned to her, smiled. “Yes, best friend?”

She put her arms around his neck, and the way she looked at him - those new lines around her eyes, most of her makeup wiped off after her modeling shoot - felt less like how other humans looked at him, full of youth and awe and unknowing. She knew him. She also knew better now than to idolize him like she used to. And for some reason, at least in that moment, she felt anything but young. “Thank you. For telling me that. I know it wasn’t easy.” 

He was still smiling, and he marveled at her. “You are such a mum.” 

She gave his foot a gentle kick. “Shut up. I’m trying to say it means a lot.” 

He nodded, not quite sure how to respond. 

Amy raised an eyebrow. “Alright, are you going to hug first or am I?”

He grinned, and pulled her into a hug, leaning back so her feet would leave the ground. He screwed his eyes shut, and smelled her shampoo, and had never felt more lucky to have a person in his life than he did with her right now. 

She finally leaned back. “Okay, let’s go pick up my daughter.” 

He held the ship’s door open for her. “After you, Pond.” 

She stepped inside, and made him laugh with an over-exaggerated hair flip to look at him over her shoulder. “Thank you, Doctor.” 

“Don’t mention it,” he replied, in what he hoped was a silly enough voice to match her dramatic turn. And once they were both in the ship, he added, more seriously, “You know, we are absolutely perfect for each other.” 

“I’m married, Doctor,” Amy responded, continuing whatever joke they’d been doing before. “You’re married too.” 

“No, but- I mean-” He rubbed his chin, looking down at the console and trying to figure out a way to say it. “You’re like a puzzle piece and I’m like a puzzle piece and it’s a ten thousand piece puzzle but we’re the only ones that fit each other.”

Amy nodded, smile sort of fading. “Yeah. I know.” 

“You really are my best friend, Amy.” 

“And you’re mine, Raggedy Man.”

“That’s embarrassing,” he murmured, looking away so she wouldn’t see his smile. “Don’t call me that.” 

“Oh, you love it,” Amy replied. “So. Shop at the corner, then River?”

He turned a knob on the console, and the ship began to move. He reached out and grabbed Amy’s hand. “Shop on the corner, then River. Plan.” 

“Plan,” Amy echoed, and gave his hand a squeeze, and they spun off together through space. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !!


End file.
